No animals spawning

[Dinyyen]

My friend and I wanted to make a friendly creaure spawner on a floating platform we made above our island, its a 45x49 island 30 blocks above our sea level island. We made a staircase of dirt so grass can travel up and the entire island covered in grass and we put a torch every 7 blocks on top yet not one animal has spawned up there. We even removed all the dirt/grass on our island and replaced it with sand so no animals would spawn down there instead of up on the platform. And the odd thing is our world is pretty much a giant ocean biome and we see animals out swimming in the ocean no where near any island with grass. So all we've accomplished with our hours of building is making a giant umbrella for our island.

TL DR - no animals are spawning on a well light grass platform, does anyone know what might be causing none to spawn?

[Auxis]

I was thinking for a second u actually had a Mob spawner set to spawn friendly mobs, but then I realized your in survival. I honestly have no idea.

[Verdugo]

Animals dont spawn in ocean biomes, it might have to do something with it.

[Auxis]

Animals dont spawn in ocean biomes, it might have to do something with it.

I'm not quite sure how to take that. On the Cursecraft server, while flying to Khanador's castle at night, I see heaps of cows and pigs frolicking in the middle of the ocean next to glowstone pillars. I don't think animals are that smart enough to wander so far from their spawn.

[Deleted]

I think there was something in one of the last patches that stated friendly mobs don't actually respawn anymore it was to do with the breeding animals patch, basically if completely killed off animals would not repopulate on their own and would probably not spawn on new player built land.

Now that said I read about it a while ago and I am not sure if it was intended or a bug or even what patch it was but it could be a route to look into as a possible cause.